


Seeds of Discord Part 17

by kbj1123



Series: Wonder Woman & Captain America [18]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Crossover Pairings, F/M, One True Pairing, Sexual Content, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:22:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3323981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbj1123/pseuds/kbj1123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone or something is causing violent riots to erupt all over the U.S., and whatever it is, it wreaks havoc with both Wonder Woman's health and Bruce Banner's ability to keep his rage in check.</p><p>Steve and Diana are temporarily stranded in Minnesota due to blizzard conditions.</p><p>For Hockeyknight, the other yoga sequence :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeds of Discord Part 17

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HockeyKnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HockeyKnight/gifts).



When he sleeps, he is in battle, although with whom she can only guess. Maybe she’s fighting alongside him. She hopes she is not the adversary in his dream. She lies on her arm and watches his brow furrow, his jaw clench the way it does when he is frustrated or angry. She is tempted to touch each bit of his face that tenses and pulses; send compassion and peace to the places that cause him distress even as he rests. After she’d just laid into him about her own rescue though, she thinks better of it. She is remembering that some battles must be fought on one’s own.

Instead, she cautiously gets out of bed and spreads a towel on the dingy carpet of the motel room. Outside their second-floor window, the world is white and pristine. They haven’t traveled again since landing in St. Paul this evening. The storm is expected to end sometime in the night. The SHIELD-issued sweatshirt and pants she’s been wearing since yesterday still smell chemical to her, as if they’d been wrapped in plastic for a long time. She peels off the shirt and steps out of the pants, preferring the damp cold to the tinge of factory-treated cotton on her skin and through her nose. Stepping closer to the ac/heat unit under the window, she lets dry, hot air blow directly over her bare torso and breasts. 

The moon is round and reflects light off the snow. She inhales her arms overhead and presses her palms together, then reaches laterally to the right. The muscles between her left ribs separate. She inhales up and pauses, aware of the subtle changes that happen when one side has reached over and the other has not. It makes her sad in an ambiguous sort of way. She changes sides. When she returns to extended mountain pose, the sides of her torso are changed, but still different from each other. They are trying their best, she tells herself. They bend differently, but the goal is the same; when she stands tall, the bones automatically knit towards, not away from each other. Perhaps the intention of wholeness is enough for now.

She inhales from her feet up into her extended index fingers, imagines sending her breath out from her fingers into the heavens, and exhales through her mouth into a standing squat. Devi asana—the goddess’ pose. Her knees come to right angles with her ankles and she slides her scapulae down the back of her ribs. Lengthening her spine; she consciously relaxes her jaw and throat. She brings her palms below her navel and rests them there. Her belly is soft and strong. Eyes closed, she observes with her hands as it stretches across her pelvic bowl, making more room for fresh air. Somewhere, a dear friend is held hostage. It didn’t have to be like this. She draws her navel deep in toward her spine, willing out with the exhalation whatever she doesn’t need right now: judgment, doubt, and sadness as well as muscle tension. Worry wants to stay. She allows it to sit there in her belly like some burrowing creature. It will leave when it teaches her its lesson. Nothing ever goes away until you have finally learned what you need to know from it. This is a lesson Apollo transmitted to her.

She inhales, straightens her knees and extends her arms out to her sides in a five-pointed star, and doesn’t force herself to steady her mind. Instead, she exists in the knowledge that a place of stillness inside of her is present. In her imagination, she is Astraea, the star goddess, the ruler of purity, innocence, justice. She holds the pose for a long time and allows herself to lose track of time, just holding this simple, open stance. Turning her palms toward the window, she plants her feet more firmly into the ground. Her gaze softens past her reflection in the dirty glass and into the quiet, pristine parking lot and sky. Artemis and Astraea must surely be dancing right now, above the sparkling whiteness of this very late night. She imagines Astraea holding open a space for her that is all light and compassion. It is enough to know that the space is there. The heater makes whiney clunking noises as it reaches its goal temperature and then shuts down. Diana sighs. The world only looks pure and innocent. There is certainly less and less justice here, it seems. “Just breathe through it,” she hears the echo of Bruce’s voice. “Watch what happens when you surrender and breathe through whatever’s going on in your mind and body.” He is a good soul. She wonders where he is, and sends out a prayer to Olympus to help keep him from suffering. 

She reaches her right arm further and further past her right foot, stretching her waist and torso parallel to the floor, and then rests her right hand on her foot, lifts the left hand to the sky into trikonasana, triangle pose. She senses into the spaces between her limbs, and all the triangles she has created: between left and right foot and her tailbone; right torso, leg, and arm; left torso, leg and arm. She thinks Steve fears that on some level that there are triangles between them and some ever-changing third party: whatever friend she spends time with, an idea she explores deeply, a mission by herself, a god. She keeps assuring him there are no triangles except the ones he conjures. All she wants is for this sense of separateness to pass. The more she wills it, the tighter its hold on her. That is how things work. Understanding and allowing are separate entities. 

“It is not the fact that you came for me that is upsetting,” she’d tried to explain. “I am pleased that you came. I am grateful. I am upset at the reasons you went about your rescue the way you did.” It is unpleasant, having her heart center exposed like this. He could have gotten himself hurt or killed. He could have suffered. Maybe he has been tortured, just as she was, but doesn’t remember. They’d figured out he had been a captive for three days. “You wouldn’t charge an army base alone; why didn’t you let him go with you, knowing the stakes were so high?” She knows Steve is feeling the effects of the last week. He is hurt that she is upset, because he did what in his mind was the right thing. She has been made to understand the difference between suffering and pain, though. She doesn’t like that she caused him pain; she worries more for his suffering, though: his inability to get past the pain of being in pain. Her shoulder blades press deeply into her back, exposing this most vulnerable place even more, until she can no longer stand it and she cartwheels her arms into low lunge. “Where is Worry now,” she asks herself. Worry is still curled into a ball at the bottom of Diana’s belly.

She moves to the center of the mat and squats deeply. Tailbone sinks down; upper arms press into her inner thighs and she once again presses her heart and sternum forward, palms press together, thumbs press to her sternum. Steve snores softly. She wonders if she is in battle when she dreams. She hopes that in her unconscious, dreaming state, Steve is not her adversary. Worry unfurls her gray body and stretches across Diana’s lower abdomen, taking up more room. She moves into her low lunge on the left side. Perhaps she was too hard on him. Maybe she should not have told him what happened between the twin gods and her: hidden that particular triangle. Sometimes she thinks she will never find the balance between truthfulness and compassion in her speech. At home, her first home, forthrightness was so important, so there would be no question of her judgments in domestic matters. In this world, forthrightness is called bluntness; her truth, when she speaks it, is heavy as Thor’s hammer. She must learn the difference between employing Athena’s wisdom as judge and Aphrodite’s lovingkindness as half of a couple. She wants him to know everything because she loves him and he says he wants to know; then she hurts him with her truth. Perhaps learning along the journey is all there is. The idea is comforting. She lifts back up into triangle on the other side, her five pointed star, goddess, and quarter-moon, back into extended mountain, completing Chandra Namaskar, the moon salutation. 

His faded reflection in the window combines with her own when she opens her eyes. “How long have you been awake?” She likes the representation of his mirror image fading into her own. They are separate and whole simultaneously.

“A while. Naked demi-goddess doing yoga is more interesting than sleeping.” She turns around to look at him. Motel stationary and pencils are strewn over the bedspread. He sweeps them aside for her to join him. She presses her back into his torso and he drapes his arm over her waist. She kisses his fingers. “Is it easier for you to think of me as not human?” She senses the change in energy and understands she misspoke. The mechanics and the meaning of English are completely different things. “What I mean is that I was a goddess; now I am mortal. I don’t know what kind of creature I am. Is the label important?” He says nothing and plays with her fingers. “Are we okay?” 

Steve laces his fingers between hers and squeezes gently. “It’s a compliment, or at least it’s meant to be one, because I see you as perfect—even the parts on the inside that aren’t perfect. He glances over at the small studies of her body he’d drawn. I’m not gonna lie, Diana. I look at you and see goddess, and princess, and angel, and perfect grace and beauty. I know there’s more to you than that.” He smiles and taps the space above the bridge of her nose. I’m well aware of the strange mess on the inside. So yeah, of course we’re okay. I love the complicated jumble even more than I love the package it’s wrapped in...which is saying something.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes. Steve plays with the end of her braid and starts whistling the song they danced to at their wedding. Diana sighs. “Living in a Cole Porter musical sounds nice right now. It sounds very UN-jumbled.” 

He sings a few bars into her ear. “Will I leave you, never?/ Could the ocean leave the shore? /Will I worship you forever? /Isn't heaven forever more? Do I love you, do I? /Oh, my dear, it's so easy to see, /Don't you know I do? /Don't I show you I do,/ Just as you love me.” 

She rolls over to face him and exaggerates a pained expression. “As long as you don’t have a singing part.” She kisses the tip of his nose. It gets a small chuckle out of him. 

 

“I meant what I said this morning on the plane,” He continues. "I trust you. I can’t promise I’ll be okay with what happened for a long time, though. I mean, I get that it wasn’t even really YOU you, but some other you…” 

Diana interrupts, “It gets confusing quickly,” she admits. “In reality, if it helps, it was me, but not my body as you know it, and not really my mind making decisions.”

He smirks. “Clear as mud. But you know what I mean. I guess in my head it makes sense, sort of, but some part of you was very up-close and personal with a god—from what I understand a particularly desirable one—and I don’t know when I’ll really get over that. But I will. I’m pretty confident that I will.” Worry shrivels a little bit in Diana’s gut, allowing her to breathe deeper. 

“Y’know, I pay attention. You breath starts to get just a little shaky when you’re about to cry.” He tilts her chin up to face him and they lock eyes. “I’m not angry at you, sweetheart. I just don’t know what to do with this. They healed you and helped you to find your strength, but I can’t help thinking they took something also, even if it was something that, as you made clear, wasn’t mine to begin with.” There is a drop of sadness in his voice, and in his eyes. “They didn’t,” she replies gently. She wishes she could take this morning’s conversation back; erase the entire argument. 

“I’ll have to take your word for it, then.” 

“Please forgive me one day. I love you so much Steve. I would never deliberately hurt you, and I am so sorry.” This is one of those moments of choosing, she thinks. She is sorry for this pain she’s instigated. She is not sorry that Apollo healed and helped her. This is how he often did things, from the stories she’s heard. Her existence on and experience of the dreamscape world is very different from that of her experience on any plane of Terra. Had Apollo and Artemis not helped her, Steve and she surely would have died in the water. Even if they still had been rescued by the search party, had she not been healed, she would still be ill each time she was exposed to the negative energy of the minor gods and the technology they’ve given their human puppets. But she wishes it had been different at the same time. She wishes she could reassure him; that he could understand. Perhaps there is wisdom in saying less, only conveying the sentiment. She hopes she is learning.

“I do, and I know, and I love you too. I’ll keep telling you that all my life and mean it every time,” he replies after a few seconds. “Never, ever doubt how I feel about you. And terms of affection aren’t labels or meant to make you feel like an object. I meant it when I said I trust you, and that I want you to be honest. Even though I’m really glad they helped you in their own weird way, I’d be pretty happy for you never to have contact with your wonder-twins again.” 

Diana cringes. “Ugh, don’t call them that. It makes my skin crawl! And anyway, they are gods. They are my gods, and I need them sometimes. It isn’t my place to question them; I don’t get to control how or when they choose to intervene. But I wasn’t seeking out any particular encounter. I don’t have the right to that, like my mother does.” 

“Yeah, I guess that makes them sound like a couple of really lame, adolescent superheroes, doesn’t it?” They both giggle over the idea. “I didn’t mean to belittle your religion.” She brings his knuckles to her mouth and kisses them. She tries to allow herself the space to be sensitive and moody, and to make room for his own conflicted feelings as well. They are both entitled to that much.

They lay side by side in the dark for a long time, listening to the heater turn itself on and off at intervals. Very gradually, the light turns worm-purple, and pulses through the snow-streaked window. In the absence of sleep, they wait, absorbed in the dingy cocoon of this motel room, for daybreak. They listen for their SHIELD-borrowed phones to alert them to news of when it will be time to re-enter this world…this world which feels very still and very fragile.


End file.
